Postcolonial Literature Glossary

The simultaneous attraction and repulsion that characterizes the relationship between colonizer and colonized in Bhabha's theory.

The system of language, knowledge, and representation through which colonial powers defined and controlled colonized peoples.

A member of the colonized elite who serves as an intermediary between the colonial power and local populations, often benefiting from and perpetuating colonial structures.

A story or account that challenges dominant, often colonial, historical narratives by presenting alternative perspectives from marginalized groups.

The process by which diverse cultural elements blend to create new, distinctive cultural forms, particularly in Caribbean postcolonial societies.

The process by which colonized peoples gain political independence and work to dismantle the cultural, economic, and psychological structures of colonial rule.

The dispersal of peoples from their original homeland, often as a result of colonialism, slavery, or migration, and the communities they form abroad.

The divided sense of identity experienced by colonized or racially marginalized peoples who must see themselves through both their own eyes and the eyes of the dominant culture.

The destruction or suppression of non-Western knowledge systems, languages, and worldviews by colonial powers.

The creation of new transcultural forms and identities through the mixing of colonizer and colonized cultures.

The quality of being at a threshold or in-between state, used in postcolonial theory to describe the transitional identity of colonized subjects between cultures.

A narrative mode that presents supernatural elements as ordinary aspects of reality, widely used by postcolonial writers to represent indigenous worldviews.

The rigid binary division of the world into absolute categories of good and evil, used by Fanon to describe colonial ideology that casts the colonizer as civilized and the colonized as savage.

The ambivalent process by which colonized subjects imitate the colonizer's culture while remaining 'almost the same, but not quite.'

Kamau Brathwaite's term for the English spoken by Caribbean peoples that incorporates African rhythms, syntax, and cultural references, representing a form of linguistic resistance.

A literary and intellectual movement celebrating Black African cultural identity, founded in the 1930s by Cesaire, Senghor, and Damas.

The continued economic and cultural domination of formerly colonized nations after formal political independence.

Edward Said's concept describing the Western tradition of producing biased knowledge about the East to justify colonial domination.

The process of constructing a group as fundamentally different and inferior to justify social exclusion or domination.

A feminist approach that addresses the intersection of gender oppression with colonial and racial oppression, challenging both Western feminism and patriarchal nationalism.

A form of colonialism in which the colonizing power sends settlers to permanently inhabit and claim sovereignty over indigenous land, as in Australia, the Americas, and South Africa.

Groups excluded from the dominant power structures of colonial and postcolonial society, particularly those whose voices are systematically silenced.

Bhabha's concept of an in-between zone where cultural meanings are negotiated and hybrid identities emerge.

The process by which subordinate or marginal groups select and incorporate elements from dominant cultures, transforming them to serve their own purposes.

The postcolonial literary strategy of rewriting canonical Western texts from the perspective of colonized or marginalized characters.